Brand success in an era of digital Darwinism

Abstract

Although the internet has been in existence for over 20 years, there is still little known about how digitisation affects the brand choices made by customers. This paper reports on analysis of more than 20,000 purchase journeys by European customers, to demonstrate how customer behaviours during the purchase process are increasingly becoming digital and how those digital touch points, from searching online to leveraging fans’ comments on brands to browsing a company's website, lead to brand selection and branded word of mouth in favour of digital savvy brands. The results confirm what some have suspected, but the paper highlights that these results are relatively strong across all sectors; indeed in some cases (eg in high tech), the effect is disproportionate, leading to an increased concentration of brand sales and brand equity for digital savvy brands. The paper sets out six actions for companies to engage better in this digital Darwinism.